Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon Smith visits JMU

Dr. Vernon Smith, considered to be the "Father of Experimental Economics," recently presented a JIN Lecture on Political Economy on "Adam Smith’s Humanomics: From Propriety and Sentiments to Property and Wealth."

Smith talked about Adam Smith’s book "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," which was published many years before "The Wealth of Nations." Although Sentiments is not well known, Smith believes it provides context for Adam Smith’s later works, including the well known "The Wealth of Nations."

Sentiments outlines the rules of propriety that constitute human sociality. In human interactions, beneficient actions invoke gratitude, while hurtful actions invoke resentment. In Sentiments, context and intentions matter.

"The Wealth of Nations" provides the intellectual foundation for understanding markets.

Smith is George L. Argyros Professor of Economics and Finance at Chapman University in Orange, Cal., a Research Scholar at the George Mason University interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow at GMU’s Mercatus Center in Arlington, Va.  In addition to having founded and served as president of numerous societies, served on numerous governing boards, and on numerous boards of editors of journals, he has been a Fellow of the Econometrics Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.  In 1995 he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and in 2002 he received with Daniel Kahneman the Swedish Bank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel, more commonly called the Nobel Prize in Economics.